This was a sufficient explanation of Timothy’s discontent. Jehoshaphat remembered that he, too, had been troubled, fifteen years ago, when the first of the nine had brought the future to his attention. He was more at ease when this enlightenment came. * * * * * Old John Wull was a gray, lean little widower, with a bald head, bowed legs, a wide, straight, thin-lipped mouth, and shaven, ashy cheeks. His eyes were young enough, blue and strong and quick, often peering masterfully through the bushy brows, which he could let drop like a curtain. In contrast with the rugged hills and illimitable sea and stout men of Satan’s Trap, his body was withered and contemptibly diminutive. His premises occupied a point of shore within the harbor—a wharf, a storehouse, a shop, a red dwelling, broad drying-flakes, and a group of out-buildings, all of which were self-sufficient and proud, and looked askance at the cottages that lined the harbor shore and strayed upon the hills beyond. It was his business to supply the needs of the folk in exchange for the fish they took from the sea—the barest need, the whole of the catch. Upon this he insisted, because he conscientiously believed, in his own way, that upon the fruits of toil commercial enterprise should feed to satiety, and cast the peelings and cores into the back yard for the folk to nose like swine. Thus he was accustomed to allow the fifty illiterate, credulous families of Satan’s Trap sufficient to keep them warm and to quiet their stomachs, but no more; for, he complained: “Isn’t they got enough on their backs?” and, “Isn’t they got enough t’ eat?” and, “Lord!” said he, “they’ll be wantin’ figs an’ joolry next.” There were times when he trembled for the fortune he had gathered in this way—in years when there were no fish, and he must feed the men and women and human litters of the Trap for nothing at all, through which he was courageous, if niggardly. When the folk complained against him, he wondered, with a righteous wag of the head, what would become of them if he should vanish with his property and leave them to fend for themselves. Sometimes he reminded them of this possibility; and then they got afraid, and thought of their young ones, and begged him to forget their complaint. His only disquietude was the fear of hell: whereby he was led to pay the wage of a succession of parsons, if they preached comforting doctrine and blue-pencilled the needle’s eye from the Testament; but not otherwise. By some wayward, compelling sense of moral obligation, he paid the school-teacher, invariably, generously, so that the little folk of Satan’s Trap might learn to read and write in the winter months. ’Rithmetic he condemned, but tolerated, as being some part of that unholy, imperative thing called l’arnin’; but he had no feeling against readin’ and writin’. There was no other trader within thirty miles.